


why can't you be like him?

by rinthegreat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Day 6: Miscommunication, Depression, Langst, M/M, Shangst Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 19:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinthegreat/pseuds/rinthegreat
Summary: Shiro may as well be saying why can’t you just be like Keith?Shangst Week 2017 Day 6: Miscommunication





	why can't you be like him?

**Author's Note:**

> I present to you: Classic Langst  
> yesterday was shiro-angst so...yeah
> 
> Another one betaed by [thislittlekumquat](https://thislittlekumquat.tumblr.com). What a champ.
> 
> ahh! whoops! i forgot to mention this is another one inspired by [this post](https://promptsforvoltron.tumblr.com/post/158656526543/langst-prompts).

Keith is Shiro’s favorite.  Period.  End of story.  For a while there, Pidge almost seemed like she had a chance, but in the end Keith is still the one Shiro goes to when he needs someone he trusts.

Lance is sure everyone knows it, but they don’t care.  Or at least, not as much as he does.

Shiro’s been his hero from the moment he’d heard of the guy.  Not a ‘legacy’ at the Garrison, Shiro had gotten in on a scholarship and had maintained the top spot in his class from day one.  He was a prodigy, youngest fighter pilot to be considered – and then chosen – for the Kerberos Mission.

Written off as a failure when the ship had gone missing.

Lance had never bought the ‘pilot error’ bullshit everyone spewed, and neither had Pidge.  He’d thought they could bond over it, but Pidge was just as secretive over that as she was over everything else.  (Case in point: she’d been a girl the whole time and hadn’t told her crew.)

Finding Shiro, learning that the Garrison were dirty rotten liars, and piloting Voltron with him should’ve been a dream come true for Lance.

Key word being ‘should’.

Because as it turns out, the only thing worse than being compared to Keith at the Garrison?  Being compared to Keith in the Castle of Lions.

Sure, Shiro never _openly_ compares them.  But taking Keith on the most important missions, trusting Keith to take over as leader in the event – apparently likely, thanks Haggar – Shiro were to disappear, and valuing Keith’s input on everything?  Yeah, he’s the favorite.  Lance is 100% positive of that.

At least Lance doesn’t have to deal with watching Keith pilot Black while Shiro is lost in space.  He’s not sure he could have handled that.

But still, watching the Red Paladin and Allura discuss things the way Shiro and Allura used to, seeing the wrong color take lead in attacks…it doesn’t sit right with Lance.  Finding Shiro and bringing him back is a strong relief for him.  Finally, everything can get back to normal.

And it does.

But _normal_ , as Lance is now continuously reminded, means being ignored.  By everyone, but especially by Shiro.

_Try to be on time for training, Lance._

_You should be putting in more practice time, Lance._

_Focus on completing the mission instead of taunting your teammates, Lance._

Shiro may as well be saying _why can’t you just be like Keith?_

The little comments build up and build up and build up until Lance finally wakes up and stumbles into the training room in the middle of the night.  He doesn’t know what time it is, but he’d guess sometime between ‘midnight’ and ‘3 am’ ship-time.  No one’s in the training deck, and he has a few hours before he has to worry about Keith and Shiro waking up for their usual morning workout.

That they do together.

He shakes his head to clear it and activates his Bayard.  He hasn’t been sleeping well, not since first leaving Earth if he’s honest with himself, so he knows he should start small.  No one has to know he came out here in the middle of the night – he can erase the training logs if he has to.

“Start Training Level 1,” he announces to the room.  A hole opens in the ceiling, dropping the first gladiator out, and he takes a deep breath before shooting.

An hour or two later – only three training levels in – Lance is sweaty and sore from running and dodging.  The Alteans apparently didn’t think to make the gladiators as weak as humans: one shot, even to the head, doesn’t drop them.  Turns out they need five shots to the same region to down them, something that took Lance two levels of trial and error to figure out.

“End training sequence,” he calls to the room before it can drop another gladiator out of the ceiling.  He dismisses his Bayard, dropping his arm with a groan.  His shoulder, bicep, and elbow are all sore.  His eyes feel permanently crossed.  He could use a shower – or five – and a ten hour nap.  He –

Lance goes silent as the sound of the door opening hits him.  He doesn’t have time or energy to hide, so instead he goes perfectly still and tries to control his breathing as they walk into the room.

He knows exactly who it is.

“Lance?”  Shiro’s voice is full of surprise when it hits him.  Lance flinches.  He’d thought it would be Keith.

With a deep breath, he shapes a cocky smile on his face and turns around.  “H _ey_ , Shiro.  Fancy seeing you here.”  He forces nonchalance into his voice, pleased when it doesn’t shake.  His body is, though, shaking hard enough it threatens to collapse underneath him.  He needs to get out of here before Shiro can see him in such a weak state.

“Everything ok?”  Shiro asks, clearly not buying the whole charade.

Well, actions speak louder than words as his abuela always said.  Lance sticks his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking, and walks up to Shiro focusing all his energy on not slipping up.  “Everything’s A-ok.  I’m just gonna go shower and I’ll catch you later.”  He gets past Shiro without being stopped and slips out the door just as Keith walks in, shooting Lance a weird look.

He makes it back to his room and somehow muscles his way into the shower before collapsing.  He’s exhausted, sore, and this _sucks_.  But…Shiro had noticed him.  He trained like Keith and Shiro _had noticed him_.

_Why can’t you be more like him?_

The answer is right there, right in front of him.  It’s then, sitting in his shower, exhausted both physically and mentally, that Lance figures it out.  If he wants Shiro to like him – no – if he wants Shiro to even _look_ at him…he has to be like Keith.

And that…that doesn’t sound too bad.  Keith sucks, but having Shiro look at him _doesn’t_.

He makes the list as he gets dressed.  The Being Like Keith List, as he titles it mentally.  Because, hey, Keith made himself well liked by everyone else too.  Even _Hunk_ , Lance’s best friend in the entire world, seems to like Keith more than Lance these days.  So clearly, that Mullet has figured things out.

The list grows in his head to the point he gets out his tablet and makes a private locked note:

  1. No More Flirting
  2. Grow mullet
  3. Don’t make jokes
  4. Don’t start stupid competitions
  5. Train every free moment of every day



He can’t say he likes everything on the list.  Especially since most of them basically mean he needs to shut up.  But if he wants Shiro to notice him – hell, if he wants to keep his friends at all – he has to make some hard changes to how he leads his life.

The first test is when Lance goes into the kitchen to find Keith using the last of Hunk’s leftovers.  He bites his tongue hard enough to taste blood, that’s how strong the desire is to challenge Keith for it.

Instead, he sucks it up and grabs a bowl, filling it with green goop.  He ignores the strange look Keith shoots him, choosing to take his bowl and eat it quietly on the other side of the counter.  He doesn’t even stick out his tongue, though it is mostly because he doesn’t want to spray blood all over the kitchen. 

Lance is pretty proud of that show of self-control.

He’s tested again when he gets onto the bridge and sees Allura in a different gown than normal, looking positively radiant.  The urge to compliment her or spin another line about how she could outshine any sun is hard to resist.  His tongue is still sore from the food incident, so he bites the inside of his lip instead.

He still tastes blood.

And as time passes, he notices a positive shift.  The rest of Team Voltron seem to take him more seriously.  Or at least, they stop shouting at him to shut up.  (Though, he admits it’s kinda hard to do that when he doesn’t say anything anymore.)

He even starts mimicking Keith’s body language.  Lance crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, not suggesting any ideas for plans and instead letting the team talk around him.  Just like Keith.  He’d thought he could be the planning guy at first, but no one liked his plans.  Then he’d thought he could be the sharpshooter, but no one else really thought that.  So instead, he figures he’ll do what he knows he’s best at: copy Keith and be ready to stand in for him if they ever need someone expendable.

They learn that they can unlock their Bayards to make different weapons.  It turns into a training exercise that has Lance chanting _please be a sword_ from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes back to sleep.  Keith, of course, figures it out first.  Lance would’ve been irritated, turned it into a competition before.  But now he’s just…

Tired.

Lance finally unlocks his Bayard, second to last to Hunk, and ends up with a sniper rifle.  It’s sleek and has a range three times that of his original gun.  Hunk and Pidge ooh and aah over it as Lance tests it on the targets Allura drops for him.  But as soon as the training ends, Lance simply deactivates it and heads back to his room.

He cries himself to sleep that night.

Lance has been growing out his hair since that night he started training instead of sleeping, but it doesn’t grow right.  He can’t make it turn into a mullet – it’s too curly, too coarse, too _brown_.  He wants to dye it, but they can’t find hair dye in space.  Or at least not hair dye that’s also not poisonous to humans.  He’s so frustrated he considers shaving it all off, but Shiro wouldn’t like him bald.

He does everything he can to be like Keith, to the point that Blue’s concern for him is a constant when they fly.  Their bond never wavers – Blue loves him no matter what at least – but he gets waves of lion telepathy, feelings that he’s everything just the way he is.  But even Blue can’t change his mind.

And despite all of this, Shiro still doesn’t notice him.

It’s not that he ignores Lance completely.  And it’s not that there isn’t a change either.  The looks Shiro sends Lance aren’t of disgust and irritation anymore, at least.  But they aren’t trust or admiration either.  They’re…well Lance doesn’t actually know what they are.

So he tries harder.  He follows Keith around, basically stalking him to find out what he does.  Keith confronts him about it, but buys Lance’s excuse that he wants a training buddy.  If he thinks it’s strange that Lance insists they only train the way Keith usually does, he doesn’t say anything about it.

The frustration that his plan isn’t working builds up and builds up.  He takes it out on his wall with punches late at night.  On his hair with sharp tugs as if he could pull it straight.  On his face as he abandons his beauty routine, waking up puffy and unrested.

Lance gets tired easily these days, worn out from holding himself back and training too much.  When the team doesn’t expect him there, he goes back to his room.  He means to sleep but he always ends up on his bed, staring at the ceiling as time passes somehow simultaneously too slow and too fast.

It comes to a head at the start of their next mission.  They need to infiltrate a prison or something on some planet…basically the same crap as always.  Lance knows his role here, so he blanks out as Shiro talks.  He wonders how long it will take for them to realize Allura would be a better pilot than him.

Hunk nudges him.

“Lance?  Did you hear me?”  Shiro is giving him that _look_ again.  The one Lance doesn’t get.

“Uh…no.  Sorry.”  He’s not really sorry.

Shiro sighs, and Lance wishes he could collapse into himself like a black hole.  But he can’t. 

“I said we need to take Blue because of her swimming capabilities.”

“Oh…who’s gonna pilot her then?”

Shiro frowns at him.  “You are, Lance.”

Lance is positive he’s dreaming right now, because there’s _no way_ Shiro told him he needed his help for anything.  “I am?”  He pinches himself with a wince.  Ok, so he’s not sleeping.

“Lance, are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Paladins, we are on a time limit; I need you to suit up and be in position in less than ten dobashes.”

Putting on his suit feels surreal, as does the trip to the hangar.  When he gets to Blue, both Shiro and Keith are there, debating about something in hushed voices.  Lance’s stomach sinks.  He’d been too optimistic thinking that Shiro really needed him.  He needs Blue to get them there, but Keith’s the one he’s taking with him.

He brushes past them, hoping to go unnoticed.  He should’ve known he’d have no such luck.

“Lance,” Shiro sounds as if they’d been caught saying something they shouldn’t have been.  They probably were.  “Are you ready?”

Shiro trusts him so little.  Lance restrains his wince and nods, walking into Blue.  He takes his seat at the helm, ignoring the sharp alarm from his lion at his mental state.  She knows the mission is always more important – she’ll still fly for him.

He runs through his pre-flight checks automatically.  Blue is well-maintained, but he does it anyway.  “Ready for flight,” he announces once the cock-pit door closes.

“Good.  Wait for Allura’s signal.”  Shiro’s voice comes from so close to Lance’s ear that he nearly jumps.  The surprise continues when he turns around and only sees Shiro in his lion.

“Where’s Keith?”

Shiro sits down in the jumper seat, hooking his harness in.  “Keith is drawing enemy fire,” he tells Lance patiently in a tone that says ‘I already told you this’.

“Oh.  Don’t you need him to get you inside the prison?”

“This prison isn’t Galra,” Shiro explains.

“Paladins, are you all in your lions?”  Allura’s voice echoes in Lance’s helmet, cutting off Shiro from expanding on his reasoning.  The moment, if it could even be called that, is lost.  A resounding ‘yes’ echoes in Lance’s ears, followed by his own delayed affirmative.  “Excellent.  We are entering the Andorian System.  Prepare for launch in three…two…one…”

They bolt into space, muting their coms for the mission at hand.  It’s blissfully quiet out here, peaceful as Lance nudges Blue towards the planet in question.

“Lance.”

He loses concentration for a moment, having forgot about Shiro.  Blue corrects, not even chastising him for his lapse.

“Yeah?”

“You…you know you’re an important member of the team, right?”

Lance turns in his chair and blinks back at Shiro.  He hasn’t moved from his place in the jumper seat, but he looks uncomfortable.  Not because of the chair. 

“Um…”  Is the only intelligent comment Lance can come up with.  Because _no_ , he doesn’t know that.  In fact, he can point out several instances which prove the exact opposite.

“You’re not a seventh wheel, Lance.  I brought you with me because I need Blue, but also because I need our sharpshooter to watch my back.”

The words hit Lance with the force of a battle cruiser.  His breath gets knocked from him and for a moment, he can’t see anything past the white hot _shame_ coursing through his very being.

Because Shiro was never supposed to hear those words.  Those words had been meant for Not-Slav, and Not-Slav only.  Hearing them repeated back to him months later is…staggering.

“Lance?  Lance are you with me?”  Shiro’s voice echoes around him, bringing Lance’s vision back…only to reveal that he’s face to face with Shiro.

Oh.

Shit.

He’d slumped over in his seat and must’ve blacked out for a moment or something because Shiro is _right there_ which is far too close for Lance’s well-being.

Lance sits up and back, ignoring the panic Blue is projecting into his mind.  She’s clearly intending to turn around and take them back to the castle.  “No,” Lance tells her out loud, “we have a mission to finish.”

Shiro looks around, frowning.  “Uh…who are you talking to?”  Great, now he thinks Lance is crazy.

“Blue.”

“Ah.  Of course.”  Shiro nods, not moving from where he’s crouched, hands on Lance’s knees.  Shit, Lance is so far gone on him.  His stomach flutters, kicking up dust inside Lance and nearly doubling him over again at the newness of it.  He hasn’t had butterflies since they’d first gotten Shiro back.

“Sorry,” he tells Shiro as soon as he finds his voice.

Shiro doesn’t leave, doesn’t move at all, except to tilt his head.  “For what?”

 _Everything_.  “Freaking out on you, I guess.”

“Lance,” those hands are back, this time grabbing his own, “there’s nothing wrong with freaking out.  I meant what I said.”

“But…”  Lance feels like a child, losing his toy for the first time only to discover it was never his to begin with.  “I’m not Keith.”

“No,” Shiro agrees, “you’re not.”  He squeezes Lance’s hand.  “I haven’t been fair to you, to any of you.  Pidge talked to me about it.  Well…Pidge yelled at me about it.  Told me that we couldn’t all be a team if I only trusted one person.”  Shiro’s thumb traces circles on the back of Lance’s hand, and he holds his breath, not wanting to break this spell.  “I didn’t mean to make you feel like you didn’t belong, Lance.  You do.  No one else could pilot Blue – even I can feel her concern for you right now.”

Lance chokes out a snort, spilling snot and tears down his face.  Disgusting.  He tears his hand from Shiro’s, wiping his nose on the back of his glove.  At least now Shiro will walk away and stop saying such embarrassing things.

“I’m not going to walk away.”

Shit.  He’d said that part out loud.  The stress of emulating Keith must really be getting to him.

“Emulating…Lance what?”

Double shit.  He needs to shut his mind up.

Shiro shakes his leg.  “Lance, talk to me not yourself.”

The frustrations, the sleepless nights, getting tossed to the floor by another training bot, staring at his ceiling as he wishes his hair would stop curling and _turn into a mullet already_ which have been brewing for a while now all come to a head at once.  Shiro already knows – there’s no point keeping it from him anymore.

“I thought you’d like me if I were more like Keith.”

Lance never thought he’d see the day Shiro could be completely speechless, yet here they are.

And once the words start, he can’t stop them.  “You’ve only ever looked at me with contempt or talked to me to tell me to ‘stop flirting’ or ‘don’t fight with Keith’ or ‘be on time to training’.  I thought maybe if I were like Keith you’d like me…even just as a teammate.  I’ve looked up to you for so long, all I wanted was you to _look_ at me and I thought…I thought…”  Lance strangles out a sob.  “Fuck…Shiro…I feel so stupid…of course it didn’t work.  Keith is…and I’m just…”

Shiro hasn’t moved an inch since Lance started talking, killing any last shred of hope Lance might’ve gained from Shiro’s little speech earlier.  He drops his head, letting the tears come out freely.

“Lance, you and Shiro need to adjust your descent into the planet.  There are a few Galra fighters who haven’t made it to Keith’s location,” Allura’s voice instructs through their helmets.  Lance doesn’t even move.

“Lance?  Shiro?  Do you copy?”  Her voice sounds simultaneously irritated and concerned.

“This is Shiro.  We copy.  Adjusting now.”

Blue obeys their leaders’ orders without Lance prompting.  He feels her shift underneath him, flying towards the opposite side of the planet of the Red Lion.

Metal fingers, cold as ice, touch the bottom of Lance’s chin, making him jump.  They guide his head up until he’s looking at Shiro again.  His eyes are rimmed in red, bloodshot.  And when Shiro speaks again, his voice is rougher than Lance has heard it before.

“Lance, I don’t want you to be like Keith.  I…like you.  For who _you_ are.”

Lance just sniffs.

Shiro shifts, moving closer before jerking backwards, fingers leaving Lance’s chin.  The other hand stays on his leg, the only tentative contact left between them.  “I need you to watch my back.  Can you complete the mission?”

He frowns at Shiro.  They’ve trained enough that it doesn’t matter how any of them are feeling – fighting has become second nature.  “Yes.”

“Come back with me and we’ll talk.”  Shiro’s hand reaches up, pausing prematurely, almost as if he’d wanted to stroke Lance’s hair but stopped himself.  “Maybe even get you a haircut.”

Lance snorts, thankful that he doesn’t blow snot all over again.  “It does look kinda ridiculous,” he agrees.  It looks nothing like he’d planned, nothing like he’d hoped.  He sits up straighter, determined to prove that he can hold himself together despite breaking down in his lion _en route to save a planet_.  “I’m fine,” he assures.

The look Shiro gives him clearly indicates that his leader thinks otherwise, but he nods and finally backs away, giving Lance room to breathe again.  “Don’t push yourself.”  He’s back in Leader ModeTM again, sitting down in the jumper seat as if nothing had happened.  “Allura, we are entering the atmosphere.”

“Copy that.”

Lance retakes control of his lion again, adjusting their course as they descend through the clouds.  He’s fine.  Totally fine.

Everything’s going to be just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> ok now you can scream at me ([here](https://rinthegreat.tumblr.com))


End file.
